I'm your host, Jester. I've been an EVE Online player for about six years. One of my four mains is Ripard Teg, pictured at left. Sadly, I've succumbed to "bittervet" disease, but I'm wandering the New Eden landscape (and from time to time, the MMO landscape) in search of a cure.You can follow along, if you want...

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Fit of the Week: Instapop Hurricane

With only a month remaining until Rubicon's interceptors make it impossible for any ship in your fleet to escape from wily frigate tackle, anti-frigate FOTWs continue with only the second Hurricane fit I've featured over the years. And it's entertaining, guaranteed to rack up kill-mails, and almost ridiculously bad... in the best possible way:

Rote Kapelle has started using variations on this fit for low-sec roams, where FW frigates and destroyers generally hold sway particularly in the USTZ that we favor. The problem, of course, is that even the largest FW frigate/destroyer gang won't engage even our small gangs, even if most of us are pirates or are willing to shoot first (or both). What they typically do instead is rush to their closest staging system, reship into bigger ships or something supported by logistics and then try to roll over us.

So we started retaliating by popping their small stuff as they run away from us. One ship of this type in a typical small-gang fleet of seven or eight ships does this job admirably. As you wait on a gate -- particularly in low-sec -- waiting for things to happen, try to lock frigates and destroyers coming through a gate passing your fleet. You have an 820mm targeting scan resolution, sufficient to lock frigates and destroyers in two to three seconds. Unless they are incredibly lucky or incredibly on the ball, you have better than even chances of popping these small targets before they can warp off.

This ship obviously operates on the concept of volley fire, doing some 3600 volley damage every eight seconds. You'll want to group your guns, and implants to increase gun damage and projectile gun damage are also good calls. You don't carry a point because ideally, your goal is to pop targets in a single volley. You can fit a third Gyro if you find the volley damage isn't high enough but you sacrifice tracking against frigate targets accelerating to warp speed and don't gain that much additional volley so be careful about that change.

The core of this fit are two Sensor Boosters and two rigs to boost scan resolution. The latter will require Electronic Superiority Rigging IV and the ability to explain yourself to your fleet-mates if you get killed in this ship. ;-) It will probably also help if you can build the rigs yourself since the price of many T2 rigs are wildly inflated right now. As of this writing, the cost of building this particular rig is around five million ISK each with a Jita price of 17 million. So you can and should downgrade to T1 rigs if you can't build the rigs yourself; you don't lose that much targeting ability by doing so.

The tank is just sufficient to tank low-sec gate guns for a while. If you can't fit the Reactor Control Unit II, you can downgrade that to T1 and then replace the shield extender with an Adaptive Invulnerability Field for nearly the same effective tank. But do keep in mind you're pretty thin. After popping a frig or two and after accepting a few gate gun volleys, warp to the closest POCO and back.

For maximum dickery, you can add a single Garde II to the mix to add to your volley a little bit. That said, it's probably much more practical to load a full flight of Hornet ECM drones and a single Warrior instead. Your single small neut is entirely defensive and to be used against anything that tackles you if the ECM drones fail.

If you get into an actual fight in this ship, your proper position is well behind the bulk of your fleet, screening for either friendly logistics or friendly e-war. When I'm flying this kind of volley ship, I personally find it useful to sort the Overview by transversal velocity. Anything that drops to the neighborhood of 200m/s or so is worth taking a pot-shot at. This will most often happen when an inexperienced tackler turns and burns directly at you or whatever you're screening.

Drop booster is more or less a requirement for this ship. Even with the fast lock time, many of your targets are going to be pretty close to 75% of their maximum speed when you take a shot at them. You can also increase tracking by carrying and firing Depleted Uranium ammunition but keep in mind this cuts down volley damage.

This kind of flying is entertaining and is likely to get you called all sorts of names both by your friends and by your targets. But if you're looking to clear tackle, there's nothing quite like popping a frigate with artillery...

All Fits of the Week are intended as general guidelines only. You
may not have the skills needed for this exact fit. If you do not, feel
free to adjust the fit to suit to meet your skills, including using meta
3 guns and "best named" defenses and e-war. Ships can also be adjusted
to use faction or dead-space modules depending on the budget of the
pilot flying it. Each FOTW is intended as a general guide to introduce
you to concepts that will help you fit and to fly that particular type
of ship more aggressively and well.

5 comments:

Rite now, there is a discussion in the interdictor rebalancing thread going on .... basically asking why the bubble launching destroyers are so bad at PvP (except sabre).At the same time i see you proposing the caracal cruiser and a sensorboosted hurricane battlecruiser as anit frigatte ships.

I feel that the reduction of the tech 2 destroyers to interdiction leaves a gap in the PvP ship arsenal. Would it be a good or a bad idea to expand the role of the tech 2 destroyer hulls also becoming dedicated anti frigatte ships ?

I know the feeling on the names, when I´ve flown an Arty Cane.... sebo-whore comes to mind. ;-)

But it's a solid anti-frigate platform if you manage to land the shots and it's also a good platform for the the kill shot on larger targets. A dying Caracal comes to mind, was trying to get away at 25% shields.... a Volley from the Cane, and boom!

haha the old QotSA Scot-Fu hurricane, the ship that was so lambasted by Rote leadership back in the day.btw not having atleast 3 gyro's on this is blasphemy. Scots Crusader would be frothing at that dcu :p pure gank F&^* the tank ;)

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